A Crane Among Wolves

27. Iseul

The sweet fragrance of gisaengsand their laughter crowded around me as I stepped out of the House. Tucking myself in the far shadow of the eaves, I watched the female entertainers welcome their guests.

“You look nothing like your sister.”

I flinched around and saw Maggot.

“I heard you were Official Choi’s niece,” he continued. “Suyeon’s sister.”

I glared at him. “Why are you here?”

“Why should I not be here?”

“You care nothing for the people, I imagine.”

The corner of his lips twitched. “You seem to know much about me, young girl, when we have never met before. Or have we?”

“We met once,” I said, my voice laced with disdain. “In my nightmares.”

He barked out a humorless laugh. “You are an odd one, and you are correct. I care nothing for people.” He prowled over to my side, peering down at me. “But do you think the men inside care at all, either?”

My brow furrowed. “Of course they do!”

His face puckered into a look of mock sympathy. “Child, you believe in what the deputy commander says? You believe he cares about things such as”—he waved his hand with a flourish—“justice?”

“Yes, and if not for the people, then for his sister—”

“His sister, his sister, his sister.” Maggot clucked his tongue. “That old hag. The deputy’s grief is but a mere display. He needed a reason to justify the—” He glanced around. They were standing at the edge of the House’s terrace, far from the crowd, but nevertheless he encrypted his words. “—the Great Event and emphasize his depravity and wonton cruelty. The true motive is that the deputy commander, along with his three closest friends, all fear they will be next to endure his wrath. And the other men? It is because they resent him for taxing them. And others yet, like myself? When one horse is about to charge off a cliff, it is the natural course of action, is it not, to switch horses? Besides, the leaders promised to reward us grandly. Do you not wish to know what I asked for?”

After a pause, he grinned as he said, “I asked for your sister.”

A coldness crept into my chest, but I beat the fear aside. “The deputy commander promised to free the girls.”

“Did he? That is not what he told me. He promised to return your sister to the family, but I am in the midst of negotiating. You see, I am Wu Sayong, a senior first-ranking official in charge of the Hanseongbu. Do you even know what that is? It is the bureau that oversees the management of the entire capital. And I hold great influence over many government officials… The leaders need me, and they will bribe me with whatever I ask for—”

I had heard enough. “My uncle would never give her up to you.”

“Your uncle… you mean the one who betrayed your parents?”

I stood frozen, shocked speechless. “What do you mean?” I choked out.

“Everyone in court knows. He made an entire spectacle, prostrating himself before the throne, when the king demoted him from the senior second rank to the junior ninth rank. He could not stand the humiliation and blurted out that his sister’s husband had been present in the palace when Deposed Queen Yun was executed. That his in-law had begged him to tell no one, and that only the guilty would bury secrets for two entire decades. The king promised to promote Official Choi after this demonstration of loyalty, but never did. So you see, your uncle betrayed your family once for a promotion, and he will betray it again.”

My mind grew dark, and I felt utterly alone.

“I do not believe you,” I said, trying to convince myself. “I do not believe a word you say.”

I hurried down the terrace, cutting through the crowd, and I did not stop running until I was gasping for air. I had, at some point, left the capital and was now on an isolated road, stained red in the light of the dying sun.

Despite my exhaustion, I quickened my steps, desperate to speak with Yul, to know her thoughts. Was Maggot telling the truth, or was he simply toying with me? The inn was only a half hour’s walk away, on the other side of the forest. Leaves rustled above me as I entered the woodland, and memories whispered in my head—of Uncle’s frequent visits, of his close friendship with Father, of their solemn conversations muffled behind screened doors. As I tread down the path winding through the forest, another memory caught up with me.

Uncle’s utter joy over the prospects of my bright future. And his words, odd to me then, now curdled my blood upon recollection.

It is my redemption, he had said. After all these years!

I fell still, my broken past piecing itself together. Not strangers, not acquaintances, but family had betrayed my parents. Uncle had thrown wide the gates to our home, beckoning the thieves to enter—to steal, kill, and destroy.

Strength quickly drained from my legs. I collapsed onto my hands and knees. My parents had died for one man’s greed. They had died for nothing.

It took a long moment for the sound to register, of hooves clip-clopping behind me. Five riders were approaching. Quickly wiping my eyes, I rose to my feet and withdrew my paedo from its ornamental sheath. I gripped the blade’s handle tight, wishing I could plunge it into Uncle’s heart.

“Good afternoon, young woman,” came a silken, smooth voice.

Dread sharpened in my chest. I had expected them to ride by me. The knife I had only withdrawn out of precaution. Slowly, I looked up.

“I am Senior Officer Yoon,” he drawled, a man who grinned wide, revealing pearly white teeth. A man with an inflamed scab that rippled across his cheek.

I stumbled back, recognition settling cold in my chest.

“I believe we have had the pleasure of meeting before.” His hand shot into the air, and in a victorious voice, he yelled, “Tie her up, men!”

“Do not dare.” I gripped my small knife tighter, its blade hidden behind the fold of my skirt. I glared up at the men before me. How like my uncle they were, those who would descend into depravity to please their king. “You will not touch me!” I screamed.

“Aigoo.” Scabbed Cheek glanced at his fellow officers. “We have caught ourselves a feisty little she-cat. Arrest her, but do not ruin her face or mar any visible part of her. We have to deliver the goods undamaged.”

An officer dismounted and prowled over with a rope. My knife-holding hand sprung forward, and a startled yelp pierced the air as he stumbled back, grabbing the side of his arm.

“The damned wench cut me!”

“Stay away!” I warned. “Come any closer, and I shall kill you! All of you!”

Scabbed Cheek smirked as he slid off his saddle, and with a quick motion of his hand, his sword’s hilt flashed my way. Pain exploded in my stomach. I was on the ground, gasping for air, the knife flown from my hand. I forced myself to push past the searing tenderness to search for it. My hand, instead, closed around a sharp rock.

This time, as the officers closed around me, I feigned compliance. I let them bind me up with a rope, and I let them drag me along, the bloodred sky vanishing as we ventured deeper into the forest. As they focused ahead, I tested my wrists, tied with a rope that was strung to the saddle of a horse. I tripped, half dragged along the uneven trails, and each time I made sure to hold the rock tight.

“Unfortunate,” Scabbed Cheek drawled, looking over his shoulder, “that you thought to be brave. You tried to save that girl. But you see, I caught her in the end. Now you will join her in the palace where you belong.”

“It seems you are mistaken.” I slid a note of fear into my voice. “You have mistaken me for someone else—”

“My dear, my dear,” he said too sweetly, “how could I forget a face like yours? I have dreamed too often of you.” Venom twisted his smile. “I have dreamed of watching you beg for death. You certainly will when I throw you into the king’s arms. For alas, his embrace will crush you.”

Angling the rock, I began to run its sharp edge against the rope, pausing whenever Scabbed Cheek looked my way. I cut away both rope and flesh. Blood dribbled down my wrist, but the shadows concealed the stain.

“Where are we going?” I demanded, trying to pin his attention on the conversation and nothing else.

“To register you as the king’s whore.”

I was too focused on my knife to feel much fear. My mind knew only to move on to the next question, to never allow him a moment to examine me too long. “How did you find me?”

“I have been looking for you for quite some time, and as luck would have it, one of my men happened to catch sight of you at the House of Bright Flowers.” Scabbed Cheek rubbed his hand against his knee. “Beautiful young women are difficult to find these days, like pearls in the dark sea. So how glad I am that our paths crossed. The king might finally promote me once I gift you to him.”

His lecherous answer dizzied me. Panic grabbed onto my thoughts, threatening to pull me under. But reason wrestled me free. Focus on the present. I had finally cut the rope down to a few threads.

Scabbed Cheek frowned. “What are you doing—”

Wrenching my wrists free, I bolted off the trail into the dense shadows of trees, the ground too dark for me to see my way. My feet slipped, and the earth abruptly dropped away. My vision hurtled around; earth sky trees earth sky trees. Finally smashing to a stop, I lay there for a moment, the breath knocked from my lungs. But then I was on my feet again, rushing through the dizzying whirl of shadows, running into trees, tripping over roots. Hooves were charging toward me.

Closer.

Then closer.

A hand snatched me, pulling me behind a tree just as the riders galloped by.

Daehyun.

A wave of relief crashed through me, so violent that I had to steady myself against him. As I pressed closer, his heart beat rapidly against my back. It was then that I noticed a small knife in his grip—the one I had dropped.

Another rider approached, slowly, with a torch raised.

“Can you run?” Daehyun whispered.

“Yes.”

He took my hand, and we moved quietly, squeezing ourselves through the trees, pushing past tangles of branches. When we emerged onto a small clearing, I finally became aware of the pain pulsing along my left arm, blazing along my left rib, and with every step I took, my bones cried out in protest. But the soreness numbed again as panic froze over. Movement rustled beyond the thicket, and four officers rode out.

“Found you.” Scabbed Cheek grinned, his stare moving to Daehyun, who tugged me behind him. “And who is that? Your lover—?”

“Hold,” an officer whispered. “Is th-that not Prince Daehyun? The king’s favorite brother.”

A wave of hesitation rippled among the riders, and when one dismounted to bow in deference, the rest followed suit, including Scabbed Cheek.

“I beg your pardon, daegam,” he called out through clenched teeth. “But you must release this girl into our custody. She belongs to the king.”

With deadly calm, Daehyun replied, “She belongs to no one.”

“But you are Prince Daehyun,” Scabbed Cheek declared, “your loyalty is to the king, and she is—”

Torchlight beamed through distant trees. The earth trembled under the tramping of hooves. Dread coiled even tighter within me.

“Reinforcements have arrived. I thought we would need them when I heard the girl was with that infamous former investigator, Wonsik.” No longer bowing, Scabbed Cheek straightened himself, snatching up his bow and arrow. “When I am asked why Prince Daehyun is dead, I shall tell the king that we killed the prince, thinking him a commoner, for he is dressed as one.”

We cannot escape, I thought, as Daehyun’s grip on my hand tightened. He whispered something, but his voice was drowned out by the noise in my head. I knew how this encounter would end.

The prince would be slain.

And whether I ran or remained, I would ultimately be dragged into the palace, ensnared and consumed.

My sister would not survive this. The sight of her little sister, murdered before her eyes, would truly kill her.

Suddenly Scabbed Cheek flinched, lowering his weapon and glancing behind him.

A tall, burly man stood with a chehongsa officer at knifepoint. “Who among you is the strongest?” he taunted.

The voice was familiar.

“Ajusshi,” I choked out.

In one swift motion, Wonsik slashed the officer’s throat. Blood streaked across his straw hat and cloak. “Come fight me, and I shall chew you three alive.”

Scabbed Cheek cursed, launching arrows that thwacked into Wonsik’s shield—the dead man. Another arrow was released. Wonsik nearly buckled as one struck his leg, and the two other officers charged toward him. Breaking off the shaft, Wonsik lunged into the melee, parrying against the flash of blades one moment, and the next, leaping off the side of a tree and in a great robe-fluttering whirl, slashing his attacker, who toppled off his horse.

Wonsik then staggered into position, angling his sword as the next officer charged at him. He waited, only to dash away just as the officer swung his sword, the blade caught in the leafy branches.

Scabbed Cheek knocked another arrow; Wonsik’s back was to him.

“Stay here,” Daehyun whispered to me. He raced through the shadows, his steps quiet for forty paces or so. He snatched the sword off a dead officer, and just as Scabbed Cheek aimed his shot, Daehyun rushed forward. Steel flashed, and Scabbed Cheek was tossed off his horse, the creature’s front hooves beating the air.

All the officers were down, motionless except for Scabbed Cheek, who writhed in pain, his leg twisted into a gruesome angle, a bone erupting outward.

“He needs to die,” I said, running forward. “He knows the prince was here with me.”

As Wonsik raised his sword, Daehyun turned me aside. A guttural cry pierced the night, then in the ensuing silence, I found myself watching the torchlight, now near enough to illuminate the silhouettes of the chehongsa officers.

“You both need to run,” Wonsik said, wiping the blood off his sword. “I will buy time for you both.”

His words stabbed me. “Come with us!” I cried.

“Do not let me slow you down.”

It was then that I noticed Wonsik’s ghastly pale face, the slight tremor to his frame. The broken shaft was lodged deep into his leg, and the side of his cheollik was drenched in blood.

Daehyun gripped his blade tighter. “I shall fight with you.”

I picked up a sword, dragging it up with two hands. “I shall remain, too.”

“Do not be fools; there is no time for this,” Wonsik said, glancing over his shoulder at the approaching storm of men. “Iseul, you have a sister waiting for you. Prince Daehyun, do not waver from the path that you are on. Move the heavens.”

“Iseul, run,” Daehyun growled. “I will stay—”

“Do not nullify the years I spent guarding your life, daegam! Do not make me break my promise to your mother, that I would watch over you until my very last breath,” his voice rasped. And when Daehyun and I still hesitated, Wonsik knocked an arrow to the bow and aimed it at the ground before us.

“Go!” he ordered with such harshness that tears sprung to my eyes. His own eyes turned red as well. “Go. And please… do not look back.”

Everything was a blur.

Of trees and bursts of open sky. Of an ankle-deep stream that dragged at my skirt, and jagged rocks that sliced at my skin. Of Prince Daehyun’s hand locked around mine, our fingers intertwined. And somehow, when I gasped to catch my breath, we were at the bottom of a slope, backs smashed up against roots and soil, his hand over my mouth as hooves trotted on the ground above, torchlight blazing about in their search.

“There!” a male voice shot out. “A strip of fabric. It belongs to the girl’s skirt. She went eastward!”

Panic thrummed, but Daehyun held me still, and there was a calmness to him that told me the discovery came as no shock to him. He must have planted the fabric there.

As the last of the horses trotted off, we did not move. We dared not speak. One wrong decision, and the horde of soldiers would come rushing back. I could still hear them off in the distance, voices calling out to one another.

Daehyun finally lowered his hand from my face and tapped me, pointing ahead at a pile of large granite rocks. Our footsteps light, we hurried over and folded ourselves into the tight yet deep crevasse. There was not space enough for two, so we became one. His arms melded around my back, and I buried my cheek against his torso, our hearts thundering—agonizing—against each other.

The hours that passed felt both short and eternal. The remaining sunlight vanished off the treetops, and as the night deepened, stars powdered the sky. In the silence that followed, broken by the shuffling and flapping of night critters, my mind sank into a cold darkness. My hands began shaking, then my entire body, and my teeth would not cease their chattering.

He is still alive, I told myself. He is waiting for us in the clearing.

He would be there with his straw hat and cloak, his sword strapped to his back. He would be nursing his bloody knuckles, like the first time I met him. He would look up, with the kind eyes of a good friend. Nangja, he would call out, perhaps, it is all over. Why were you so afraid?

He is still alive.I clenched my jaw. He is still alive.

But as time passed, a question crept into my heart, spreading frost throughout me. What if he is not?

I shook my head. Surely the heavens would not be so cruel? He had remained kindhearted in a world that was a fist. He had extended friendship to me when he could have left me to die, killed by my own stupidity. He was a father who’d choose to love his son again in the afterlife, the son who had remorselessly walked out of his life. Wonsik was a lantern in this darkened world.

Please do not blow out his light, I directed my desperate thoughts to the heavens. Please, please, please, I beg of you. Please let him live. Please reach down and embrace him, shield him from the raining of swords and arrows. Please protect the kindhearted. Please protect my friend.

The sky lightened into a miserable blue-gray. Shadows sank, and first light doused the treetops. My head swayed from the weight of a thousand whispered prayers, choking my thoughts like the smoke rising from incense sticks. It took a moment for me to peer through the haze in my mind and to realize that I had not seen a single soldier since the evening.

“Let’s go back,” Daehyun said stiffly, his eyes burning with grief. “There is enough light to travel now.”

“I share your heart,” I managed to whisper.

We hurried back across the river, through the forest. We pushed past the tangle of trees, and branch by branch, I caught glimpses of the clearing. Motionless bodies of chehongsa officers were strewn about. At the center of the carnage, a broad-shouldered man lay curled like a child. I am tired, his voice laced with the wind. I need to rest.

I staggered forward, and as I stared at Wonsik, I remembered.

I remembered the way he would glance over his shoulder, looking at me as though I were a stray cat lost in a kingdom filled with giants.

I remembered returning to the inn after a long day and him always asking if I had eaten yet, and if I had not, he would personally prepare a table for me.

I remembered his broken heart, and the starry skies as he lectured me.

A sob escaped my throat as I tripped over him and landed on my knees. The blood-drenched earth seeped through my skirt, and Wonsik did not move.

“Ajusshi, please.” I tugged at a small corner of his sleeve. “Ajusshi. We have returned.”

Deep grooves split his flesh, wounds that circled him, as though a crowd of officers had taunted him with quick slashes. The final blow—a sword run through his chest and twisted. How could people be so cruel?

I gripped his hand, as strong and rough as my own father’s. And then it came. That surge of grief, my heart splintering into a thousand pieces, shards that dug into my rib cage with every breath I took.

Wonsik was gone.

He would not return in the morning, or by the week’s end, or within a few years’ time. He would never step into the inn again with his kind eyes and kinder words. He was gone, permanently. Vanished off the face of the earth even though his body lay before me.

“It is all my fault.” I could barely speak through the tremors. “If I hadn’t walked off on my own, if I hadn’t struck that officer, W-Wonsik would not be lying here…”

Daehyun stood motionless, shoulders taut. His eyes were that of a dead man. And he would not look at me. Coolly, he said, “We must bury him, lest the king’s men discover the corpse. No man is safe from his wrath, even in death.” He took a step forward, then halted, his shoulders tensing. The slightest tremble shook him. “We shall return to the inn and find help.”

I could not leave. My hand still clung to Wonsik by his sleeve. “How can we leave him again? All alone—”

“Pull yourself together,” Daehyun snapped, his voice as brittle as ice. “He is gone, and there is no time to grieve, there is no time to mourn in this fucking hellhole.” A muscle worked in his jaw, and his brows knitted together. The moment I saw his pain, his features twisted back into a mask. “There is no time for farewells, Young Mistress Boyeon. But there is a killer to be found and a king to be fought. So get up.”

Dashing away my tears, I bolted to my feet, his heartless words sending molten iron through my veins. “Wonsik is dead and you tell me not to grieve?” I stormed over to him, the man who stood before me as an unfeeling rock. My hands balled into a fist, and I struck his chest; he did not so much as wince. I struck him harder, and still not a flinch. “I hope it crushes you, all your unfelt agony and sorrow.” I drew out my sharpest words. “And when you die,” I whispered, my stare unwavering from his, “I hope no one sheds a tear for you. Not that anyone would.”

Slamming past his shoulder, I stalked away, and though remorse pricked at me, I did not turn back. I left him behind, just as I had left Suyeon the day of our last fight.